


Savior

by sidechick



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, star wars episode VII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Cute Kids, Explanations, Gen, Jedi Temple, Mild Blood, Past, Pre-TFA, Vomiting, kinda cute kinda devastating, luke's jedi academy but not book canon, spitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 00:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13938717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidechick/pseuds/sidechick
Summary: Bendislikesmeditation.It’s always just mildly warm here, on this isolated planet, air enveloping skin like tepid milk. No matter the season. Downpours and dry winds both bring same unstimulating temperature. Mossy stones of the temple echo it to push against Ben’s thighs, ankles, palms. It seeps through the threadbare mat he sits on. It feeds countless tiny lives that buzz on the waves of milk-air just to make the process that much more unbearable.Here, between Ben’s itchy-numb ass and his itchy-burned nose, lies the key to galactic peace.





	Savior

**Author's Note:**

> An old thing reposted from my other account bc no one read it there, and I want to keep my fandoms separated.
> 
> I've adored this fan theory since day one, and JJ and Ryan can pry it out of my COLD DEAD HANDS!

There’s process to everything. Steps to take; gradualness. Ben even understands this, on some level. Not on a level that counts, however. Logically, yes: his brain grasps the concept of a ladder, of bars adding up one on top of the other to build a way. It is possible to skip a couple, perhaps several, but not take a single leap and appear on top. Meditation delivers peace and clear mind; clear mind translates into clear moves and untarnished vision – all instruments necessary for bringing peace to the galaxy. Ergo, hours of silent stillness are crucial to universal salvation. Ben’s brain comprehends that.

Ben ha-

Ben _dislikes_ meditation.

It’s always just mildly warm here, on this isolated planet, air enveloping skin like tepid milk. No matter the season. Downpours and dry winds both bring same unstimulating temperature. Mossy stones of the temple echo it to push against Ben’s thighs, ankles, palms. It seeps through the threadbare mat he sits on. It feeds countless tiny lives that buzz on the waves of milk-air just to make the process that much more unbearable.

Here, between Ben’s itchy-numb ass and his itchy-burned nose, lies the key to galactic peace.

***

Master Skywalker cannot save the galaxy.

He meets every sunset as dreaded omen, but never looks away while it burns. His eyes are ringed with its pinky hues always, even when the sun is long drowned beneath horizon or hangs high in the sky. He finishes any tea padawans bring him in crude unglazed teacups: no matter if raindrops diluted the drink, no matter if it’s gone cold.

Ben spit in the cup once, and Master finished it in one gulp.

Master keeps reminding Ben of the ladder, but Ben never once forgot about it. Likewise, this mindfulness never once helped.

Master Skywalker is Uncle Luke, and how can Uncle Luke

_“-here now, my boy, easy. Breathe. It was but a bad dream that will not return.”_

_(It did. It always did. It always does.)_

save the galaxy?

***

The temple is under external patronage; all funds are sourced by the New Republic through concealed Resistance accounts. Apprentices want for nothing – in reasonable terms. Shelter, clothes, food, education. Times are tough everywhere outside of choice bubbles like this one, though. As a result, once in a blue moon, the order will get a foundling. “I came in the room and she was levitating her blocks,” “he knows things before they happen,” “they talk without opening their mouths”. All lies, of course.

Master Skywalker indulges too often. Takes strays in to train alongside the really gifted. Once it becomes apparent the Force is sealed from them, they are sidelined to general classes and later assisted in finding work elsewhere off-world.

Ben dislikes it when his time gets stolen by imposters.

It’s a week into rain season. Cara-cara flowers are blooming lavishly under awnings and high domes, and the supper alarm blares an hour later now.

“To aid in your quest for patience,” Master Skywalker says, nudging a child forward with gentle palm between her shoulder blades.

The girl is barely five. Master used to keep her close – she’s a bit wild. Never before ate a full portion or drunk her fill or slept through the night. Her homeworld floats in ruins somewhere amongst the stars, obscured by a heavy blanket of clouds. Another innocent collateral of Ben’s inability to meditate.

Her name is Ashreya, and everyone calls her Ash.

Ben dislikes the nickname immediately.

***

He’s not burdened with pet owner duties, not required to assist in feeding or washing the child. What remains is equally a chore. Very first, basic stances are so deeply engrained in Ben’s body memory they are almost forgotten; he has to drag their practical seed forward and filter out accompanying recollections of failure, frustration, tiredness. Has to arrange chubby short fingers around a light training staff and readjust resulting grip endlessly during practice. Has to walk a younger, restless consciousness through basics of meditation – a cruel irony of faith? A similarly cruel lesson from Master Skywalker, more like.

He has better things to do.

Ben is actually admired here, see. Others look up to him for his skill with saber and Force. His erratic speaking patterns add to the “mysterious” persona, while his dry sense of humor is considered charming rather than rude. A stark difference from every youth political camp General Organa ever stuck him into. 

He’s surrounded by equally frustrated peers eager to hear what Ben has to say. They swallow down bland, well-balanced fodder temple kitchen produces via hands of those on duty, and gather in the back garden. No matter how tight the security around the academy’s location is, contraband always reaches those in need. Under rainfall and weeping brunches of Daibaga trees Ben shares repast with others who are desperate to save the galaxy. They levitate intoxicatingly sweet, salty, tart, peppery treats between them and gorge on the tastes as well as crude words and harsh laughter.

That’s where the girl finds him one evening after stumbling through lush foliage. Everyone falls silent, and the quiet is met with curiosity on her freckled face. It’s not a striking picture. She’s a cute kid, eyes young with age, but in a bland, temple food way. Even coloring head to toe, like a mongrel companion animal.

“Ash!” Tha-Thna greets with contemptuous delight at an opportunity to taunt an innocent. “Are you lost, little one?” Younglings aren’t supposed to venture into the garden by themselves.

The girl looks at her elder, defiant, and turns away to announce: “Ben, we have to go practice more. Master said.”

“Master said,” he echoes after swallowing his mouthful, emotionless, and doesn’t move.

Llar picks up on the strange mood, nudges Ben’s shoulder with his own. “The name suits her so well, don’t you agree?” It’s a stage whisper, loud over the swishing water. “She’s so… plain. Like a pile of ash, indeed.”

The girl’s planet is ash. Her whole world is ash. Ash is all she knows.

“Come, take a bite.” Ben beacons her over with a half-eaten candy bar until tentative steps are taken. Once the flavor hits her unrefined pallet, an excited flush overtakes all that is visible from the collar and up. “Tastes good, right?”

Chewing, apparently, is far more important than words.

He feeds her bits and pieces for the rest of the meeting to encourage this muteness, as an animal owner would. She gorges, cheeks puffed and gaze glazed over, too preoccupied to listen. Later, when others scatter, she gets sick in the bushes. Vomit comes out of the tiny body with so much force and in such volumes, that Ben’s own stomach cramps in sympathy. He looks the girl over when she’s done: tear tracks down pale sweaty face, lower half of which is almost entirely slime. Her hands and robes are a sticky mess.

“Let’s go,” Ben growls through clenched teeth.

He tilts a pitcher over the lawn behind the dry season baths as she scrabbles to wash everything away. They are going to take a clean uniform from the laundry room – it’s Nan Tokkar’s shift, and he has a weak mind. No one will notice this impromptu shower in today’s heavy weather, either.

The earth will absorb Ben’s mistakes and conceal them further under wet grass.

***

He identifies as just “he” inside his own head now. Not “Ben.” He ha-

He dislikes Ben.

***

Ben’s mother, unaware, continues to call regularly, but she’s the one to cut the comms short, every time.

***

Ben’s grandmother, a queen (that proved beginner’s luck is a real thing) and a failed senator, believed in process and protocol and ceremony, in placing brick beside brick on a foundation of democracy. That shaped her downfall when decisive, immediate action to save the galaxy was required. Either the foundation proved shaky, or the reality knocked her toy wall down with a shiny-white army boot.

He has never been to Naboo, but dreams of the Lake Country visit him often. It’s a bit like the planet he’s on currently, only with contrast cranked all the way up and flavor added. The wind sends picturesque waves through tall weeds of aromatic meadow. There’s water close by, and, ashore, a harmonious bird song trills.

He always takes the golden-clad figure that stands ahead for Padme Amidala of House Naberrie, but first few steps towards it shatter the illusion. It’s a man, and, through never witnessed in person, much like the landscape around, he is familiar.

This man knows all about immediate action. And he is happy to share.

“Ben!”

That is his name no longer, so he will not wake up to it.

“Ben!”

After getting pushed off the mattress, the hard floor proves to be the only salvation. He could never understand why exactly his chest bursts with terrified screams the way it does during these visits, as if a nightmare has descended. It never feels horrible inside the vision.

The girl stands at the footboard of his cot, clumsily braided hair and a sheet cape diminishing nothing of her fierce glare. “You were having a bad dream.”

He’s hoarse. “How do you know.”

Older padawans are allowed the privilege of relative privacy and are assigned ascetic solitary cells, unlike younglings, who share communal dormitories. The wall of constant rain is the only curtain adorning his narrow window – an embrasure, really. No thunder roars. Thunderstorms are too much a feature for this planet to host.

The girl outstretches a hand, calluses already burst and still fresh alike adorning its palm. Something glints: a garishly wrapped candied Bodo seed lies there. He fed some to her earlier in the week; its siblings, half-digested, are becoming one with the garden soil right now. Funny. He never even noticed the girl tucking one away. Hunger, evidently, is an efficient and ruthless teacher.

“You were screaming inside my head,” the girl grumbles. She’s tired, unaccustomed to the new dwelling yet, and, if awoken in night, won’t be able to fall asleep again. A grueling problem when one’s days are filled with constant physical activity and unrelenting studies. He would know. He can easily pull the displeasure from her not-fully-grown mind – a public holocube to him. “A monster came.”

“There’s no monster,” he retorts, but accepts the trivial treasure proposed. It’s overly sweet, and the dose of glucose immediately takes the edge off. He ha-

He dislikes admitting that.

He gets up from the floor. “Come.”

Others in the girl’s dormitory are dead to the world – snores galore, limbs akimbo in assortment. He escorts her to the vacant cot near the far wall. She’s silent and resigned. There’s going to be no admitting weakness tonight. Once she’s under the thin blanket, he takes ahold of her holocube mind in same exact way he fidgets with the ones from the library.

“Sleep,” he orders, and she does.

***

Fragile reverence envelopes the moment: a mark for the right one. Here, the birth of the new peace. Behind his lips, on his tongue, between his cheeks. Dozens of eyes follow him, gleaming in half-darkness. 

“You know,” he muses, “I always wanted to save the galaxy. Is that naïve of me?”

“A heavy burden to shoulder, for sure,” Tha-Thna nods. “When you bare it alone.” 

“And am I?” He looks at the assembly. “Alone?”

Tha-Thna huffs and is soon laughing brightly, as if his proclamation is absolutely ludicrous. Llar gathers himself to look taller, braced. Others follow, each in their own subtle way.

“It’s always possible to find kindred spirits,” he sticks his chin in the air, stretching his neck, sucks a breath in through clenched front teeth. “Similarly, it’s always possible to find a better teacher to fill any gaps left by an inferior one.”

Timing is the only thing of importance now.

***

“This is so boring,” the girl whines. Well, for her it’s a whine. A statement of fact slightly prolonged in the vowels. Cara-cara flowers lining the canopy are at the late stage of their life cycle and thus echo high-pitched sounds in synchronized chime – last-ditch attempt at attracting local avian pollinators. They pick up the “boring” part to carry it along the vine.

He keeps at the routine, swings sharply down, gets back in position. Just half a hundred more. “You need to build up strength and refine your basic technique to get to the more complicated forms.”

The movements he’s demonstrating are part of Ataru: younglings largely start with them since, through the years, they proved more beginner-friendly, swings wider and easier to comprehend.

The girl resumes required stance obediently enough. “Swords are dumb,” she concludes. “I like meditation better. It’s fun and bright.”

He swings down hard, and his training blade gives a piercing whoosh. 

***

Anger surges through his abdomen in thick waves. His eyes and cheeks are burning with it, and he can hear the heartbeat in his ears. Meditation is stillness, and action is the opposite of that. In a dangerous situation any choice is better than inaction. He envisions a ladder, and it’s infinite: lower half engulfed by clouds, upper part eclipsed with prickly sunlight. There’s no final destination, no end, no resolution, _nothing_.

Likewise, for him, there’s no peace. No balance.

This meditation hut was constructed on the outskirts of the temple grounds with the help from republican guards; the design is standard and utilitarian, parts came pre-made. Some assembly was required. It serves its purpose well. In a different place wind would swipe strings of rain inside – but not here. The wind is only ever minor here, not enough carried strength. Water droplets still reach his skin, little ricochet ones that break from a larger bead upon landing. They almost leave a cool sting… but not quite.

Sharp pain in his burned forearm is the only real, bright sensation in this whole kriffing star system.

The wait for their destined moment had been slowly killing him as of late, and today the mask slipped a bit during sparring. He injured Nan Tokkar and, what’s most appalling, let his defenses down enough for the pig to get him back. No matter. The weakling paid for his transgression.

Master Skywalker screeched for Ben to stop, but that isn’t his name anymore, so he hadn’t.

And now, punishment. Solitary reflection; no food, no saber. Probably an individual moralist lection later, too, oh joy.

He di-

He hates. He _hates_ meditation.

He gorges on this hate alongside the pain, and he’s pretty sure he never felt more powerful. But the time isn’t right, and a somber necessity of pretending, of sitting still needs to be endured. Deep breathes for now. Again and again. Measured-

Something small and hard collides with his leg. A quick check reveals a plastic box of bacta patches, frozen on its side at an arm’s reach. He raises his head, eyes now open all the way. Through the doorless gap in the hut’s front wall he sees the girl. She’s covering under a large plucked leaf for an umbrella and looks like she’s been crying, maybe.

For him? What a silly creature.

She gestures at her own hand, then back at him. Heels, dark with wet dirt, flicker as she turns to run away.

***

He is given a new name, and it’s Kylo Ren.

***

Kylo Ren can save the galaxy.

***

The eyes of a kicked pet look up at him.

“I’ll deal with the girl,” Ben says, and the soreness of his throat enters those words as they crawl out.

Others cheer.

“The galaxy won’t overlook your sacrifice, little Ashreya,” is Tha-Thna’s promise. She smiles, wide, slides away.

The surrounding dissonance seems surreal. For the amount of energies that had burst and passed here in the last couple of hours, for all the movement and life and death, this place remains… itself. Gentle water keeps falling, not sufficient to squelch the bouquet of flames in their temple-vase. Everything is still. It’s rain season, after all.

The Force is in uproar, but that’s invisible.

Past trauma took over, and the girl’s pain is also buried, body motionless rather than hysterical. The bright arterial blood – a fan managed to splash out before a lightsaber had cauterized the wound – of the killed republican guard is sprayed diagonally across her ashen – ha! – face, but the rain has already began breaking it into watercolor streaks. She doesn’t resist when Ben yanks her up harshly to drag away, fingers connecting in an easy clasp over the slim bicep. Tracks plow the black soft mud deep.

Temple hangar, unburned for now, houses several crafts capable of reaching hyperspeed. 

Ben hunches on himself in the captain chair and proceeds to shake, cold and sweat-soaked, all the way to Jakku. Controllers slip out of his unsteady grip numerous times. His stomach is a ball of pain and an acidic fire licks up his arms and back. His eyes feel torn open, as if the eyelids had been cut off. He doesn’t think. The girl’s unconscious body ( _“Sleep!”_ ) lays across three passenger seats, unstrapped.

He… can’t. He just can’t.

It’s a junkyard planet, a cemetery for greater past and a memorial for its devastating wars that now sustain life in a fit of cosmic harmony. Ben had visited there before alongside Han Solo, and made an effort to be generous with money and stingy with words both times. He protected some from debt collectors, collected coin for others. Favors are owed.

Of that, Unkar Plutt is reminded at a point of an unfamiliar red saber.

***

Ben wakes the girl up, but not all the way, and not _all_ of her. The blood and the mud of a distant world cling, but all will soon dry and crust over to flake away. To be forgotten. An unsettling dream, a fleeting memory that might be a figment of imagination.

Ben hurts. He longs for such oblivion.

The girl blinks up at him, sluggish, while he has her mind. Some desperate faceless mother lost somewhere needn’t bother: her daughter did end up on a desolate futureless rock, after all.

“Flowers do not sing,” Ben presses, “and skies do not leak endlessly. You’ve never tried Bodo seeds. There’s no such thing as the Force. Luke Skywalker is only a myth. And you… you are just a girl.

“Your name is Rey,” he adds, before pushing her away into a waiting unfamiliar grasp.

Ben’s gone to the black before she starts waking up. He will not conceal this memory. But he will take it deeper inside himself, where it’ll be unreachable.

***

Kylo hates Ben.

***

“No!” Rey screams, helpless arm outstretched towards the white-hot desert sky. “No! Come back!”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my story! <3


End file.
